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0 pointsleviathan9y ago0 comments

I keep hearing this, but here's my anecdote.

I signed up for AdWords a long time ago and created a test campaign just to see what it looks like, but never completed the process, so I didn't have a payment method entered.

Fast forward till start of this year, I created an AdMob account to put ads in one iOS game I have, and apparently as soon as I entered my credit card info, the old AdWords campaign started running and was taking $200/day. I noticed after two days and immediately stopped it and contacted support. They quickly got back to me, a person called me and explained that the issue was an error from their side, and they refunded me the amount. It took three weeks for the refund to occur, and during that time the guy called me at least once per week to keep me in the loop. I was surprised with this after all I've heard about Google's support. But I guess that's just one data point in the pool.

0 comments

degenerate9y ago

AdWords is "different" because if your account has an issue, they aren't getting lots of your money. So their support is actually pretty good with AdWords. The rest of their services, the support is pretty bad (such as Google Apps), and their free services may as well have zero support.

geomark9y ago

My anecdote: I was brought in to help with an AdWords campaign for an ecommerce site. I did some keyword research, ran some small campaigns to get some CTR and conversion metrics, then kicked off a bigger campain, pruning keywords as needed to ensure CTR stayed up and we didn't get a low CTR slap on the account which results in CPC skyrocketing. It was chugging along at a pretty good ROI. At that point I turned it over to the person who is named as the contact on the account with instructions on how to keep it running. A couple days later they got a call from someone at Adwords offering to "help", and they recommended turning on display ads. A few days of that and the CTR had plummeted, CPC prices had skyrocketed, and ROI tanked and the account was ruined - couldn't get a decent CPC due to the CTR hole that had been dug.

Thanks Adwords support.

gpvos9y ago

CTR = click-through rate, CPC = cost per click

creshal9y ago

Adwords is the only Google product to have dedicated support staff… and they're working on commission. Of course they're going to haunt you until the end of the world.

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